Well put. From April 2015 to April 2021, this New Shepard booster made 15 sub-orbital test flights, and during the second half of 2021 finally flew some people. This third such flight was dubbed “Original Six”, I guess because the previous two flights only carried four each. According to the wiki-wacky, three more tourist hops are planned for 2022.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin can’t seem to complete work on the much larger engine needed for the proposed New Glenn booster, and more to the point, for their customer to use in their spacecraft design.
By constrast, SpaceX’ biggest problem as stated is, inability to construct their large engine quickly enough to suit Musk, oops, I mean, to launch the phase 2 Starlink sats.
Also by constrast, using good old RP-1 and LOX, the SpaceX Falcon 9 / Dragon capsule combo has been delivering cargo to orbit since May 2012, and taking crews to the ISS and back since May 2020.
My wild guess is, the Starship won’t have its first successful orbital test flight for a year or more, but in 2023 will take a trip around the Moon whether NASA is ready or not, and a prototype Mars version will manage orbital capture at Mars sometime in 2024 or early 2025. Launch window for Mars occurs a bit more than every two years, and a round trip takes under three years.
Thank you for the background information. So it’s a race: will Blue Origin make it to earth orbit before SpaceX makes it to Mars orbit?
SpaceX would have already completed a sub-orbital flight if the FAA had not interfered. Also, Bezo’s silly lawsuits stopped the moon trips for months for nothing. I believe that SpaceX will make several sub-orbital flights during 2022.